Luke Bauerlein: “The year I turned seventeen my mom and I moved from big-city Chicago to a small Midwestern town. Boy, was I in for a real case of culture shock. Though I tried hard to fit in, I couldn’t believe I was living in a place where the city council had banned rock music and poetry! There was, however, one small pleasure: Ariel, a troubled but lovely blonde with a jealous boyfriend. Her father was a prominent minister in town and was also the man responsible for keeping the town poetry-free. A lot of my classmates wanted to do away with this ordinance, and so, with the national Poetry Out Loud competition looming, we started holding secret slams in an abandoned grain mill outside the town limits to practice. Through my slam prowess I was able to win Ariel’s heart and gain the respect of her father. Eventually, I worked up the courage to attend a city council meeting to abolish the outmoded ban and wound up revitalizing the spirit of the repressed townspeople with a full recitation of Milton’s Paradise Lost.” (website)